Is Ian McNabb Really an Inside Job?

A strange Facebook page claims to be revealing the truth behind Liverpool conspiracy buster and occasional songwriter Ian McNabb, so Shaun Ponsonby tracked down the man behind it and demanded answers.

Liverpool music fans on Facebook will no doubt have seen some strange conspiracy theories doing the rounds recently.

Truth be told, we should be used to it. Icicle Works frontman Ian McNabb has been peddling this stuff for years. Not content with writing a couple of OK songs in the 80s (according to my dad), he now has a second career as an intellectual conspiracy buster, sticking it to the definitely real illuminati and heroically getting into arguments with people on social media.

Indeed, if not for the efforts of Ian McNabb, we surely would have all perished years ago.

But all is not what it seems. One anonymous investigator – who asked only to be known as Chester Beddingfield – has gone one step further and revealed some frightening information about McNabb on the Facebook page Ian McNabb Was An Inside Job.

“I’ve been woke for some years now,” Beddingfield told us. “Ever since I was coming back from town on the bus from Rapid with a spirit level, and noticed that it stayed flat, despite the fact that the powers that be tell us that the earth is round? Who do they think they’re kidding when we can disprove that with basic street-science?”

The mysterious Beddingfield became puzzled by some fairly strange ramblings from McNabb infecting his Facebook feed. “At first I thought it was an annoying ageing fella. We’ve all worked with people like that, they seem to get a bit cranky when their cocks stop working. Now, at this point I’d never heard his music, but then someone put me onto his tune Liverpool Girl when the topic of his cringe Facebook persona came up at a party. I had a listen to it the next day and I realised, this can’t be real, there’s something else going on.”

Beddingfield, clearly “woke” in the most tenuous definition of the word, did some digging, and it became increasingly apparent to him that McNabb himself is working for the evil Illuminati, a secret society that definitely exists and isn’t just a paranoid conspiracy concocted by failed footballer turned self-proclaimed Son of God David Icke.

“He’s not covering for [the Illuminati], he’s working for them. Whether he’s senior enough to be an actual member of The Illuminati is unclear, though his total lack of commercial success would suggest he’s not been able to earn a place at the top table at Bohemian Grove. The proof itself is hard to find unless you’re experienced at places such as The University Of YouTube, where you learn to decipher the meanings hidden right in front of us, then we delved deeper, the proofs are on the page.”

What’s more, Beddingfield has the evidence to prove it, or at least as much evidence as McNabb himself offers, which is essentially just rambling speculation; “He’s presenting himself as a ‘truth-seeker‘ but it’s all a mirage, he’s pretending to shine a light on a lot of conspiracies around the world but that’s the rope-a-dope he’s playing to draw in the malleable minds to give them the real messages, the darker messages in his songs that his handlers in the Illuminati wish to spread, we go through these truths at our page.”

McNabb does this through his alter ego Chairman Boots – Vigilant Citizen., the full stop actually being part of the name. Beddingfield claims that this is an amalgamation of left wing icons such as Chairman Mao and Citizen Smith, with added unnecessary punctuation just to be extra rebellious, “when really the hidden message is to conform, or else. It’s quite a clever trick on the part of his handlers“.

Beddingfield started his page as a lone crusader. But eventually, other people joined in with the investigation. He received messages from some randomer I didn’t bother to track down detailing the depths of McNabb‘s ties with the Illuminati. “Our page pointed out that one of Ian‘s companies has a director that’s not a real person, but a shell company linked to thousands more. Our anonymous source has real skill in this area and was able to prove Ian‘s links to a hidden conspiracy that encompasses the Catholic church, George Soros, Bono, hamburgers and an astonishing but compelling link between Ian and Guy Fawkes.”

Picture: Ian McNabb Was An Inside Job

These are obviously serious allegations, and not to be taken seriously lightly. The question must surely come back to how McNabb was able to gain a platform for his faux vigilance. Lest we forget – and most people have – McNabb literally had a Top 20 hit once. In 1983, The Icicle Works‘ Love Is a Wonderful Colour became such a smash that it doesn’t have it’s own Wikipedia entry, presumably because the site does not have the bandwidth to sustain the praise heaped upon it. In contrast, over 30 LaToya Jackson songs have their own Wikipedia entires, because her discography just hasn’t been as popular.

I put this to Beddingfield, pleading to his sense of musicality. Surely, McNabb’s career has some worth?

“If I was the kind of fella who thinks the pinnacle of music is blues-rock played in real ale pubs, then I imagine I’d think of him as The Messiah, which you can see on his Facebook loads of his sycophants see him as. But I’m not, so what I really see is someone increasingly retreating into howlingly bad musical clichés accompanied by cringe lyrics about things he knows nothing about.”

Despite my pleas, Beddingfield is unflinching; “If there was a round of Pointless with the topic “80s one hit wonders” then I’d advise everyone to put The Icicle Works as your answer, you’d be sure to win, but for the minority of us who actually have heard it, there’s a divide between the small number of mad sycophants who are keeping him off the streets and larger number of us who just have a puzzled bemusement at how any body of work so bad can even exist. It only makes sense when you realise the hidden hand of The Illuminati is behind it.”

So, is Ian McNabb an inside job? Hard to say. But Chester Beddingfield has certainly lifted the lid on a shadowy figure – though this could be himself as much as Ian McNabb. Having lulled him into a false sense of security, I use all my journalistic skills to trap Beddingfield with a carefully selected gotcha question. I put down my crayons as if the interview is over, I look to the door and motion to leave. But before I do, I pounce on Beddingfield with the precision of a lion. “Are you making this shit up?!” I splutter, bits of biscuit falling out of my mouth, which is weird as I hadn’t eaten any biscuits.

To my surprise, Beddingfield was calm and collected. “That is mildly insulting,” he says. “Truth seekers like myself don’t make things up, that’s just what the mainstream media want you to think. We spend hours studying at the College of Chrome, the Faculty of Firefox and of course, the University of YouTube.”

*We didn’t reach out to McNabb for comment as this article has no intention of being impartial and, frankly, to call me a journalist would be an insult to the profession. Plus that wouldn’t be funny. But we’re assuming he denies the allegations and blah-blah-blah.